Choral Ballets

[Richard LH]

Having an idle thought - is it just my lack of knowledge, or are there  hardly any ballets set to choral music?  Beyond the  Waltz of the Snowflakes in the Nutcracker, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms in Yugen, and Mozart's Requiem by the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, I am struggling..... 

Why is this, I am wondering....?

Edited August 4, 2018 by Richard LH

[Jan McNulty]

Birgit Scherzer also choreographed a (magnificent) piece to Mozart's Requiem.  How about the choral bits in Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream?  David Bintley's Carmina Burina (oh how I would love to see that again and again and again...)?

 

Philip Feeney used choral elements in the final scenes (the blood wedding) of Christopher Gable/Michael Pink's Dracula.

 

Just for clarification (and in case I can think of anything more) how do you describe choral music?

[alison]

MacMillan's Requiem and Gloria?  And if you're going to include Nutcracker then Daphnis and Chloe must also go in.  As must The Dream.

 

Mark Morris has choreographed quite a few, of course.  I'm sure there are plenty outside the UK repertoire.  Don't forget the ROH was resistant to MacMillan choreographing choral music as they didn't think it was appropriate.

[Lizbie1]

17 minutes ago, Richard LH said:

Why is this, I am wondering....?

 

Possibly because of ballet's history of expressing itself through mime, making words superfluous and even distracting? Thinking about use of choirs in music specifically written for ballet, I can't recall any which aren't wordless. (Someone will no doubt correct me!)

 

8 minutes ago, alison said:

Don't forget the ROH was resistant to MacMillan choreographing choral music as they didn't think it was appropriate.

 

Purely stating a personal opinion, I have some sympathy with their position. The Dream just about gets away with it because the choral parts are limited, but though I like both the choreography and the score for Gloria, I find the whole less than the sum of its parts.

 

That said, I like Song of the Earth and Dark Elegies, maybe because the singers are on stage. (Easier for a soloist than a choir, both because of the physical space taken up and because a choir takes a lot more work if it isn't to look awkward.)

[Pulcinella]

Another one which hasn't been seen for ages is Les Noces.

[Richard LH]

2 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

Just for clarification (and in case I can think of anything more) how do you describe choral music?

Well music sung by  a choir, I suppose, but perhaps my query should also extend to solo singing, or by several individuals.

Edited August 4, 2018 by Richard LH

[James]

2 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

Possibly because of ballet's history of expressing itself through mime, making words superfluous and even distracting? Thinking about use of choirs in music specifically written for ballet, I can't recall any which aren't wordless. (Someone will no doubt correct me!)

 

 

Howard Goodall's Requiem, Eternal Light, was written for Ballet Rambert. I saw it at Snape Maltings, and very beautiful it was, too.

[Douglas Allen]

Depending on what you mean by "choral music", it's a bit difficult to think of a major choreographer who hasn't, at some point, not used choral music. Off-hand, I can think of works by Ivanov, Nijinska, Tudor, Balanchine, Ashton, Cranko, Macmillan, Bejart and Massine. The most outrageous example is when Balanchine was invited by the Metropolitan Opera to direct a production of Gluck's opera  Orfeo ed Euridice, he simply stuck the singers and chorus in the pit alongside the orchestra and staged the opera as a ballet with the dancers occupying the stage.

Would it be worth suggesting this as the norm at Covent Garden in future - perhaps starting with the Ring?

Edited August 4, 2018 by Douglas Allen
bad typing

[Pas de Quatre]

There are the Stravinsky opera ballets, Pulchinella, Renard and Mavra all commissioned by Diaghilev, and of course The Soldiers Tale.

[toursenlair]

Neumeier has done Bach's St Matthew Passion and Christmas Oratorio.

[Lizbie1]

1 hour ago, Pas de Quatre said:

There are the Stravinsky opera ballets, Pulchinella, Renard and Mavra all commissioned by Diaghilev, and of course The Soldiers Tale.

 

Haven't seen it, but I thought Mavra was an opera, and isn't The Soldier's Tale spoken rather than sung?  And the other two are for soloists rather than choirs, IIRC.

 

(Please excuse if I'm wrong, I'm not exactly addicted to Stravinsky - I generally only like his music when he's ripping another composer off.)

Edited August 4, 2018 by Lizbie1

[Duck]

Thierry Malandain choreographed Noé to Rossini's Messa di Gloria. Uwe Scholz did The Creation based on Haydn's eponymous work. Mauricio Wainrot created The Messiah to Haendel's work of that name.

Douglas Allen mentioned Bejart - I can think of Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer and 9th Symphony to Beethoven but this may not be the complete list?

There are a number of dance elements in Demis Volpi's Death in Venice, a coproduction by Stuttgart Opera and Stuttgart Ballet.

Richard Siegal will provide the choreography and staging for a work to Bernstein's Mass for Musiktheater im Revier in a co-production with Ballet im Revier in Gelsenkirchen in autumn 2018.

 

If we look at choral music/ music for solo or several singers beyond classical music - Will Tuckett created a work to Weill's Seven Deadly Sins, and Louis Stiens will provide the choreography for a co-production by Stuttgart Ballet, Stuttgart Opera and Schauspiel Stuttgart in early 2019.   Volpi created Little Monsters to songs by Elvis Presley. Goecke has used a number of non-classical pieces for his works e.g., Sarah Vaughn, Johnny Cash, Etta James.

 

 

[Scheherezade]

Mark Baldwin choreographed Handel's The Creation for Rambert. And didn't Mark Morris also use Handel's oratiorios?

[Ian Macmillan]

Somewhere up above, Lizbie wondered about wordless choral ballets - well, Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe score has large tracts of wordless choral effects.

 

But one way or another, Richard should by now be better informed on the topic than when he started this thread.

[Richard LH]

8 hours ago, Ian Macmillan said:

But one way or another, Richard should by now be better informed on the topic than when he started this thread.

I certainly am! Thank you  everyone.

Indeed I can add the choral music in The Dream to my experience now, having just watched the newly released Ashton triple bill DVD. Lovely!

 

[Angela]

On 04/08/2018 at 17:58, Douglas Allen said:

Would it be worth suggesting this as the norm at Covent Garden in future - perhaps starting with the Ring?

 

There is a four hour ballet by Maurice Béjart called "Ring um den Ring", where you have exactly that: dancers als Wotan, Brünnhilde, Siegfried and so on, clearly looking much younger and much more like heroes than the opera singers who usually do the job . Béjart used taped extracts from the Tetralogy, but also a live pianist on stage playing parts of Wagner's music, and Michael Denard as narrator. He had great ideas, a ballet barre was made into Wotan's spear, and Loge, the god of fire, danced with a delirious Brünnhilde for the immolation scene at the end. I knew the Ring very well but Béjart's ballet made me understand even more of the philosophy behind it, he even pointed the way to Parsifal at the end, from Buddhism to Christianity. I never understood why you don't like Béjart in England and the US... 😔

[RuthE]

On ‎04‎/‎08‎/‎2018 at 21:47, Scheherezade said:

Mark Baldwin choreographed Handel's The Creation for Rambert. And didn't Mark Morris also use Handel's oratiorios?

 

I've definitely seen Mark Morris's "L'Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato".  I'm not sure if there are others.

[Angela]

The great William Forsythe made his very first ballet on a song:  "Urlicht" by Gustav Mahler, from the second symphony.

[Angela]

Martin Schläpfer choreographed "Ein Deutsches Requiem" by Brahms for Ballet on the Rhine in 2011, the chorus was on a balcony above the stage.

[Angela]

Christian Spuck made Verdi's Requiem two years ago at Zurich, with the chorus on stage amid the dancers.

[Douglas Allen]

1 hour ago, Angela said:

 

There is a four hour ballet by Maurice Béjart called "Ring um den Ring", where you have exactly that: dancers als Wotan, Brünnhilde, Siegfried and so on, clearly looking much younger and much more like heroes than the opera singers who usually do the job . Béjart used taped extracts from the Tetralogy, but also a live pianist on stage playing parts of Wagner's music, and Michael Denard as narrator. He had great ideas, a ballet barre was made into Wotan's spear, and Loge, the god of fire, danced with a delirious Brünnhilde for the immolation scene at the end. I knew the Ring very well but Béjart's ballet made me understand even more of the philosophy behind it, he even pointed the way to Parsifal at the end, from Buddhism to Christianity. I never understood why you don't like Béjart in England and the US... 😔

Angela,

 

Lovely response! I must admit I wasn't aware of Bejart's response to the Ring. It sounds.......interesting. I do like some of Bejart, but the usual criticism applied to his works is of frequently being a touch overblown - so the idea of a reduction of the Ring to only four hours seems novel and interesting. The idea of Bejart being shorter than his source is original. He is, though, without a doubt, an original and significant choreographer and clearly was an astonishing company and audience builder, especially in his Brussels days. His collaborations with Bortoluzzi, Farrell and especially Donn were astonishing and he never got the acclaim he deserved from critics in New York and London for the large scale works he attempted and the quasi-stadium shows he produced. Some of the problems affecting his reputation might lie in the difficulty nowadays of reproducing adequately his larger-scale ballets.

[Angela]

Oh thanks, dear Douglas, I'm glad to read that Béjart is appreciated. I always thought that for the pure ballet lovers, there was too much philosophy or literature in his works, too much theatre. The Ring around the Ring was made for Berlin in 1990, they had some revivals, the last in 2013, and now it will probably never be seen again. Berlin had a rich Béjart tradition in the 1990s, for the Ballet of the Deutsche Oper (West) and the Ballet of the Staatsoper (East), but I don't think the new director is interested in these works.

 

Another ballet with chorus: Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, choreographed by Jirí Kylián in 1978

[bangorballetboy]

1 hour ago, Douglas Allen said:

but the usual criticism applied to his works is of frequently being a touch overblown 

 

4 hours for the Ring is still overblown when you consider my first encounter with the Ring was the Reduced Shakespeare Company's version, which (being on Channel 4) came in at a little under 30 minutes, and Anna Russell manages it in 21.5!

 

😎

[RuthE]

I had no idea about the Reduced Shakespeare Company's version until you mentioned it, BBB. I see it's on YouTube so I'll have to give it a watch later! http://reducedshakespeare.com/2016/10/the-ring-reduced-now-online/

[Jan McNulty]

6 hours ago, Angela said:

 

There is a four hour ballet by Maurice Béjart called "Ring um den Ring", where you have exactly that: dancers als Wotan, Brünnhilde, Siegfried and so on, clearly looking much younger and much more like heroes than the opera singers who usually do the job . Béjart used taped extracts from the Tetralogy, but also a live pianist on stage playing parts of Wagner's music, and Michael Denard as narrator. He had great ideas, a ballet barre was made into Wotan's spear, and Loge, the god of fire, danced with a delirious Brünnhilde for the immolation scene at the end. I knew the Ring very well but Béjart's ballet made me understand even more of the philosophy behind it, he even pointed the way to Parsifal at the end, from Buddhism to Christianity. I never understood why you don't like Béjart in England and the US... 😔

 

 

Only 4 hours!  When I saw it at the Edinburgh Festival in 1991 or 92 I am sure it lasted at least 5 hours (I vaguely recall it starting around 18:15 and ending around 23:45 with one of the intervals lasting an hour so that people could eat).  It ended so late the traditional Edinburgh firework display had finished!

 

I loved it though!  

 

My friend and I booked a trip to Berlin to see Cruel Garden and Ring around the Ring but the Ring show was cancelled and we saw a third performance of Cruel Garden.

[Angela]

Janet, it may be four hours plus intermission - I checked my Berlin programme from 2013, but it does not state the length of the show or the acts (a huge flaw in many German theatres). The intermission at Berlin was shorter than the one hour they have at Bayreuth, that I remember 😁 Can't find the old programme from 1990...

[ninamargaret]

9 hours ago, Angela said:

There is a four hour ballet by Maurice Béjart called "Ring um den Ring", where you have exactly that: dancers als Wotan, Brünnhilde, Siegfried and so on, clearly looking much younger and much more like heroes than the opera singers who usually do the job

I didn't know about this and am now suitably fascinated! I've always thought that it would be amazement see The Ring using all the whistles and bells of very high tech staging, together with singers who looked and acted right = this might go some way towards that. Thanks for pointing me in its direction

[Angela]

12 hours ago, ninamargaret said:

The Ring using all the whistles and bells of very high tech staging, together with singers who looked and acted right =

 

I thought the Harry Kupfer Ring at Bayreuth once took that direction, many of the singers looked and acted "right". But this is way off topic, I'm sorry.

[jm365]

The sad thing is that many of Bejart's ballets - especially these large scale ones that require actors and/or singers as well as dancers - are unlikely ever to be performed again.  I am so lucky to have followed Bejart from the 1970s on in Brussels, Paris and Lausanne as well as his all too rare visits to London.  I particularly regret that so many of the ballets were never recorded.  In particular I would love to see Notre Faust and Moliere again - though whether the current Bejart Ballet Lausanne could field artists to match those who were trained and rehearsed by Bejart himself is an unknown.  Gil Roman, the AD, was one of the last etoiles who actually worked with Bejart.

 

Sorry - again off the central line of this thread - but I am so happy to see Bejart coming up for discussion!

[Richard LH]

Pina Bausch's production of Gluck's Orpheus  und Eurydike, performed by the Paris Opera (2008), is amazing on Blu-Ray.

Edited September 27, 2018 by Richard LH

[assoluta]

On 04/08/2018 at 06:35, Richard LH said:

Having an idle thought - is it just my lack of knowledge, or are there  hardly any ballets set to choral music?  Beyond the  Waltz of the Snowflakes in the Nutcracker, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms in Yugen, and Mozart's Requiem by the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, I am struggling..... 

Why is this, I am wondering....?

 

Singing is generally highly distracting when full attention should be focused on watching dancing. An illustration of this is provided by the recording of Natalia Makarova's "Dying Swan" to the accompaniment of singing.

[bangorballetboy]

5 hours ago, assoluta said:

 

Singing is generally highly distracting when full attention should be focused on watching dancing. 

 

Speak for yourself; to me that’s a generalisation too far.  Maybe we should drop the music, set and costumes as well.

[Ian Macmillan]

BBB: I'm right with you on that!